I’ve been writing for a while but I feel like I’ve stagnated for a while. What have other people done?
Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
1–10 of 95 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#2Creative writing? Or improving the quality of your personal / professional comms?
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#3Shitty first drafts
https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%...
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#4write more, read good writing. emulate good writing. read books on writing? Stephen King's "on writing" is recommended all the time
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#5Two things:
1. Read about writing. The very tactical stuff like "On Writing Well" and "Writing Tools" and "The Craft of Scientific Writing"
2. Imitate writers you like. Try reading someone else's work, then reproducing it in their style.
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#6The Mountain Man's Field Guide to Grammar: A Fearless Adventure in Grammar, Style, and Usage
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#7Read more in order to identify the types of writing you admire, enjoy and perhaps wish to emulate on some level. I like William Zinsser's books, On Writing Well is the "flagship" I guess.
If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#8write more, read good writing. emulate good writing. read books on writing? Stephen King's "on writing" is recommended all the time
To add to all of this, reading books in the same genre that you want to write in (whether fiction or nonfiction) helps a lot.
For the longest time with my fiction I was just focusing on writing writing writing and reading about writing. I'd always loved to read, but surprisingly never really read that much in my target genre. When I started, it's like another gate of improvement was opened up: analyzing the beats and conflict points of successful books in my genre immediately helped me see what I was lacking in mine. And being exposed to the wording preferences and writing styles of other authors gave me so many "Aha!" moments when it comes to formulating enticing prose.
I'm still not a good fiction writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the improvement has been steady when coupling reading in my genre with more writing.
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#9Read some fiction you might not normally read, sometimes you'll find phrases or sentences so interesting in the way they're constructed it's a learning experience. One example for me was reading Charles Dickens. Reading some of his stuff as a child in school was an inferior experience to reading it as an adult.
Write a lot, and repeatedly re-read what you wrote (when it's done in its entirety). You'll naturally correct yourself or tune it.
Re: Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
#10My personal experience has led me to believe that there’s truly no substitute for reading a lot and writing a lot. But the funny thing is that you may not realize how true that is until you’ve gotten sick and tired of trying to find shortcuts and hacks. You can get burnt out on reading and watching material about how to write well but it can be helpful in moderation. The best resource I’ve found is the Belief Agency YouTube channel. They have a lot of great interviews/shows about how command of the concept of storytelling can improve your communication, written or otherwise. Brian McDonald’s books are great too—-especially Invisible Ink. One more thing I’ve found helpful is to take up a practice that has nothing to do with writing—-gardening in my case—-and see if you can learn some things that shape the way you think about the writing process. All of these things should lead you back to a regular practice of reading and writing though. It’s like an archaeological dig. Most of the time you’re just throwing dirt over your shoulder but once in a while you find treasure.